


Subtleties of Black

by J (j_writes)



Category: Panic At The Disco
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:43:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_writes/pseuds/J
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon Walker joined Panic because Spencer asked him to, and he'd learned very early on that he was physically incapable of refusing Spencer Smith anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subtleties of Black

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Foxxcub in the Turning Tricks or Treats challenge, Fall 2007.

Jon Walker joined Panic because Spencer asked him to, and he'd learned very early on that he was physically incapable of refusing Spencer Smith anything.  
______________

He took pictures of the guys because they were there, and because touring could sometimes be the most boring thing in the world.

That was what he told them, anyway.

Really, he took pictures because Spencer looked unbearably beautiful most of the time, and he wanted to capture that in a way that was more permanent than just remembering it.

After a while it went unnoticed, the soft clicking of his camera in the background while Brendon and Spencer played Guitar Hero, or Ryan and Spencer sat at the table, Ryan's legs resting across Spencer's lap as he scribbled into one of his notebooks. They didn't ignore the pictures, exactly, but they accepted them as a new part of their everyday existence, just like they had accepted the rest of him.

Then, halfway through Jon's first tour with them, Spencer got interested in the camera.

Ryan didn't really like getting his picture taken, but he'd learned to put up with it most of the time. Brendon would occasionally decide that it was time to strike ridiculous poses in front of Jon and see how the pictures turned out. But Spencer, he would sit beside Jon, on a bench or a staircase, and he'd start pointing out things that Jon should take pictures of. A cobweb twisted across a sign, a woman passing by, the way the light hit against the side of the bus at sunset. Insignificant moments in time, exactly the kinds of things that Jon loved photographing.

"You're like my muse," he told Spencer one night, the two of them sitting on the ground, leaning back against the bus, waiting to leave, and Spencer laughed, tipping his head back and looking at the sky.

"I'm pretty inspiring," he agreed, grinning over at Jon, and Jon regretted that he couldn't pull out his camera to save the moment.

Instead he took a snapshot in his mind, and filed it away with the others.  
______________

It was Brendon who asked to see the pictures first, of course, climbing into Jon's bunk and curling up with his head in Jon's lap. "Come on, please?" he begged, so Jon showed him the one of Ryan sprawled out asleep on the roof of the bus, and the one of Ryan and Brendon fighting over the last of the ice cream, and the one of Zack falling off the couch with laughter.

He didn't show him the one of Spencer stretched out on the floor behind his kit, blue light catching the edges of his hair, or the one of Brendon wrapped around Spencer's shoulders as they stumbled offstage, both of them beaming in a way that didn't include the camera, didn't include anyone but the two of them.

Those, he kept for himself.  
______________

Jon didn't want to be the one to tell Brendon that Spencer was in love with him.

Instead, he showed him.

The album was easy to make. He literally had hundreds of pictures of the two of them together, and even more of Spencer alone, when Brendon was the only other one in the room. In most of them, he was wearing what Jon referred to as his Brendon smile, the one that lit up his face, made him even more beautiful than he was on a regular basis. He chose his favorites, the ones that hurt to give away.

He left it on Brendon's bed.

Brendon didn't say a word about it, but two days later Ryan pulled open the curtain to Jon's bunk, glared down at him, and said "_What_ are you doing?"

Jon sighed up at the ceiling. "I don't know," he said.

"Yeah. That much is obvious," Ryan told him, and walked away.  
______________

It was Spencer who returned the album to him, along with all the pictures he had put in it, wrapped up in an elastic.

"Is this the part where you ask me to leave the band?" he asked. Spencer didn't answer, he just put the album onto Jon's lap and sat down at the end of his bed, watching him.

Jon opened the book to find it full of different pictures, ones that had stayed hidden in the shoeboxes under his bunk. Pictures of Spencer alone, laughing into the camera after a show, curled up and staring out a window, a few from the moments when Brendon would sneak into Jon's bunk and come out to aim the camera at him.

Jon doubled over laughing, a hand resting between Spencer's shoulders. Jon leaning over his first coffee of the morning, eyes tired but watching Spencer, reading the paper across from him. Jon asleep in Spencer's lap, Spencer's hand combing gently through his hair, that same beautiful smile on his face.

"Brendon wasn't the only one around when you were taking these pictures," Spencer told him, holding up the stack of photos.

"Oh," Jon said. "_Oh_." He looked at the smiling Spencers in his hands rather than the one who was staring back at him. "I thought…"

"You thought wrong." When he finally did raise his head, Spencer was smiling. It was the same smile he'd saved in so many of his photos, but this time it didn't hurt at all to see it. "I think you should kiss me now," Spencer told him, crawling up the bed until he was leaning into Jon's space.

So Jon did, because he'd learned very early on that he was physically incapable of refusing Spencer Smith anything.


End file.
